A number of cloud service providers sell various cloud services to execute compute instances on behalf of their customers. For example, AMAZON sells its AMAZON WEB SERVICES (AWS) service, GOOGLE sells its GOOGLE APP ENGINE service, and others sell similar services, hi exchange for a fee, AMAZON, GOOGLE, and other cloud service providers provide the use of their servers and other infrastructure to customers for a limited time in the form of a cloud service instance. The fee may vary depending on a time/date that the cloud service instance is to be run, a performance of the cloud service instance (e.g., throughput, latency, etc.), whether the offered cloud service instance is a spot instance or a standard instance, and/or other attributes.
A standard instance is a cloud service instance that is guaranteed to run to completion upon payment of the fee. A spot instance is a cloud service instance that is run so long as a customer's bid price exceeds a current spot price, which may change over time. A spot instance may be terminated early if the current spot price is raised above the bid price while the spot instance is still running. Although the provider of a spot instance will typically refund all or a portion of the bid price (or otherwise not charge all or a portion the bid price) if early termination occurs, use of spot instances may be risky for compute instances that should not be interrupted and should not experience outages. Accordingly, prices for spot instances are typically lower than for standard instances.
Because a variety of cloud services are available, each with different pricing, performance, and/other attributes, it may be difficult for a customer to make purchase decisions based on the customer's unique requirements. Furthermore, because prices, performance, and/or other attributes of a cloud service instance can vary over time, it may be difficult to make a purchase decision in real-time. It may also be difficult to leverage the unique properties of spot instances, including their inherent risk and fee structure. These and other drawbacks exist.